Re: License FAQ

On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 07:24:21PM -0600, Dr. Rich Murphey wrote:
> David Dawes's announcement stated why the change was made.
> 
> Of course, if you're instead looking for someone to personally justify it to
> you, that's another question.

He gave a bad excuse only though.

If i remember well, the fear was that some third party may reuse the
XFree86 code base, without giving due aknowledgement.

I personnally think this was a bad move, and i said so in the past.
There are other ways of getting those aknowledgements, without
necessarily getting the opprobe of the whole community by doing dubious
licencing changes, and it would have been smarter PR wise to clearly
denounce those case of abuse, and ask that proper aknowledgement is
given by those. Much more positive PR wise.

As it stands, the impression is that some unamed third party tried to
take over the code and the mindshare of developers, and this move was a
deliberate move to make things more difficult for them. But the real
result is that the XFree86 Project is loosing even more mindshare, that
they are exhaspering contributors to the point they will more probably
go to these concurent projects in the future. Especially if you consider
the way positive critics were received here, and the utter lack of
understanding of the issue by the XFree86 Project.

But then, it is the right of the XFree86 Project to take those choices,
and the consequences will be of their responsability.

Still, i believe it is not too late to change this. A clear move on the
XFree86 Project to remove or solve all code of discutable lincencing,
and to go back to a more reasonable licencing practice, while at the
same time identifying and placing the opprobe on said third party
project, would be a great way to reverse this PR disaster.

But is there interest in doing so ? Or maybe there are other hidden
reason which were not told which make this analysis wrong ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther